


how can i try to explain?

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Kidfic, PTSD, Trauma, destructive coping mechanisms, parenting, people trying their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-27 15:40:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14428806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: Rocket goes from having a best friend he can rely on to having an infant to raise. It's the most important thing he's ever done, and he's not at all certain that he's good enough; he's just a selfish fuckup who can't even look after himself, and he takes it out on the people around him. But there's nothing else to do except try.





	how can i try to explain?

**Author's Note:**

> This is under ten thousand words and it's taken me a year to write. It's pretty personal, a distillation of all my feelings about trauma and family, told via a sad space raccoon. It was hard to write. There's a lot here about the aftereffects of trauma and poor coping strategies. I don't know that 'enjoy' is the right word for this one, but if you make it to the end, I hope it does something for you.
> 
> Title from Yusuf's "Father and Son", because, of course.

Groot didn't talk for the first few days after they'd replanted him. Well, part of him. None of them knew much about gardening; they needed a Xandarian expert to assure them that yes, this would work, and here was how to do it. A pot of soil, enriched to help a cutting take root, and this twig would really grow back into... well.

“Into  _ what? _ ” Rocket growled, whipping his head around. It was the first time he’d taken his eyes off Groot since he’d watched the botanist gently pat in the dirt around its stem.

“It- he can grow into  _ something _ ,” she assured them. “A tree, the same species, although he might look different. But…”

The growl in Rocket’s throat was rising in volume to a full snarl until Drax put a hand on his shoulder. The touch wasn’t exactly comforting, but it was grounding, and Rocket fought himself for a few moments until his growl trailed off and his hair stopped standing on end. Then he let out a heaving breath, shrugged Drax’s hand off and returned to watching Groot’s pot, staring until he could forget that anyone else was there. He didn’t turn away until hours later when Groot finally stirred, the branched ends of the twig shifting slowly, an infinitesimal amount, and two slits in the bark opened into a pair of tiny, familiar eyes.

Rocket reached out like he was afraid to break him and gently touched a claw to Groot’s one remaining leaf. He held his breath until Groot tapped back, then he clutched the pot in his arms and sagged to the ground.

“Okay,” he said at last, to the botanist, his voice scratchy and thin. “Okay. Okay. Tell me how I have to water him, again.”

  
  


They were three or so Xandarian weeks into their new joint business venture when Groot spoke his first new words. They were, unsurprisingly, “I am Groot.” Unusually, for Rocket, all he could hear in those words was “I am Groot.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said, extending a single claw again. Groot met it with a tiny fistbump. “You’re Groot.”

To Rocket’s concern, he couldn't seem to hear Groot saying anything else for at least a week. When he did start picking up nuances in Groot’s speech again, they didn’t make any sense. To the rest of the crew, Groot sounded the same as ever, though now adorably high-pitched. To Rocket, there was a gaping chasm between the language they used to share, and the way he strained to understand Groot now.

Rocket had never pretended to be selfless, and never would. He liked being the only one who could understand Groot. They spoke a language they’d built together over years and years of long space flights and battlefields. It wasn’t just about having Groot’s words all to himself, it was speaking a language that was only theirs, one that they’d invented together. Now Groot didn’t remember it.

It ached. The loss of the language, the loss of such a big part of their relationship, and wondering whether this is just the surface of how much Groot has forgotten. And worse, he wondered what he’s missing. He lay awake at night, cursing the fact that Groot was more vulnerable and dependent on Rocket than he’d ever been in his life, and Rocket couldn’t even understand what he needed.

Rocket was still the one Groot looked to whenever he spoke. He remembered something. He just had to hold onto that.

 

Drax was the only person on board who knew anything about children. Gamora and Quill had once  _ been _ children, at least, which was more than Rocket could say for himself. None of them knew that; if they did, they might have not have just assumed that he knew what he was doing. Rocket liked that they assume that, he wanted to be Groot's most important person, but there was a seed of doubt wondering why nobody ever asked if he was good enough for the job.

He didn’t want to ask for help. He didn’t want to admit that he had no idea about parenting, and he definitely didn’t want to admit that he was  _ terrified _ . But he was losing sleep wondering if he was doing this right and he knew it’s affecting the way he worked the rest of the time, too, and if he fucked this up he won’t have any time at all.

When he noticed Groot’s new suckers were starting to droop, he hugged the pot to his chest to keep his hands steady, clenched his teeth and called his crew.

“Something’s wrong,” he spat out, after a few halting starts. “Groot isn’t… he’s… uh… Something’s wrong, and I don’t, I don’t fuckin know how to fix it, okay?”

“Okay. What do you need?” said Quill, and he was so reasonable Rocket wants to snarl in his kind, decent face.

“I don’t know, that’s the problem!” Rocket hugged the pot tighter. He felt his lips pulling back, baring his teeth in a defensive, animal display, and he didn’t have the energy to stop himself. “I don’t know what plants need, I never grew a fuckin plant in my life, Groot always looked after himself before and I… I can’t understand him any more. I’m not sure if he knows how to speak. I think he’s trying but I don’t even know…”

He sat down suddenly, right there on the floor, and bowed his head. He couldn’t look Quill in the eye right now, but he could hear him saying “Okay, okay, we’ll find out. We have computers and things, or we can kidnap a botanist…”

Rocket’s eyes were closed. He could hear Gamora mocking Quill’s idea of research, because haven’t you even heard of reading,  _ Peter _ , and Drax’s assurances that children learn to speak just from listening. He didn’t know if it was going to be okay, but he asked, and they were trying to help, and that effort alone had drained him. He stayed there, head bent over Groot’s cutting pot, and after a moment he felt one of Groot’s fresh, limp leaves stroking at his face and wiping away his tears.

  
  


The Guardians went about helping Groot the way they did most things: with plans that were ill-advised, badly researched, and kind of worked out anyway. Gamora spent two days reading everything she could access about plant life from the ship, then demanded they go planetside so she could spend another two days in a library. She came out of it with a composting system for all the ship’s waste and put some on Groot’s roots twice a week. Peter played through all his music to try to figure out which of his tunes was Groot’s favourite, and then played it at all opportunities. And Drax talked to him about how children learn to talk from listening, most of all, but you can teach them, too.

Rocket would have realised that, if he'd thought about it. That was how he learned to talk. It wasn't anything he cared to remember, but he would do it for Groot.

They started with pointing at things, saying the words, and listening to what Groot says back. It made Rocket shudder, remembering cold bars and cold hands and rewards of disgusting hard food when he first managed to curl his lips into human sound-shapes, but it’s the easiest way to start understanding each other again, and it worked. It was easier to bear when he realised that it was painful for Drax, too, dredging up memories of his daughter’s early years. Rocket pointed to parts as he built a new weapon, or to things they saw when he carried Groot around the surface of another planet. He got jarred by memories of cages and surgeries and electric shocks, and he could see Drax tensing and turning away sometimes, with memories of small hands and a different tiny, joyful voice. They both smiled whenever Groot gestured with his own slender branches and repeated a new inflection over and over.

It wasn't a question of whether practicing words with Groot wa worth the pain. ‘Worth it’ implied an evaluation, a weighing up of options. Rocket wouldn’t choose this if there were another way. He thought Drax would choose an alternative if there was one; he's even worse than Rocket at admitting he’s in pain, but it's written all over him, every day. There were no other options, though, none that let Rocket and Groot stay together while Groot grows. Raising Groot was simply something he needed to do; reliving the pain of his past was the price.

  
  


They were on Despar for a pit stop, and Rocket had to buy parts. He'd left Groot on board with Quill, so he could have both hands free to sift through things at the market and test everything out. It was a great afternoon, and it would have stayed a great afternoon except that he stepped back on board to see Quill dancing around with Groot's pot in his hands, like he didn't even care that he could drop Groot and smash him, flailing his arms around like that. When Quill tossed a laughing Groot into the air, Rocket lost it. He dropped his spoils with a loud clatter, leapt snarling into the air and snatched Groot out of Quill's hands.

"What are you  _ doing _ ?" He hunched over on the floor, rapidly patting Groot all over to check that nothing was broken. He was fine. Groot was fine. Rocket still couldn't stop his hands from shaking. "You could have killed him!"

"Come on, Rocket," Quill said, holding up his hands. "We were just having some fun."

The worst part was that Quill sounded  _ bored _ . Not angry or afraid or worried, just bored, like he knew Rocket was going to be angry and he was already tired of it.

Also, he could tell from way that Groot was whining and flapping his limbs at Rocket's chest that Quill was right. Groot was just having fun.

He could tell Groot that he couldn't do that any more, that he was small and fragile and they didn't know if he could grow his limbs back if he broke them. But it wasn't Groot's fault, and it was the first time since  _ that day _ that he'd heard Groot laugh.

"I can't fucking believe you," he snapped at Quill, instead. "I thought I could trust you to make sure he's safe and you just throw him around like it doesn't even  _ matter _ ."

"Hey, buddy, I'm sorry." Quill's face changed in an instant, soft and apologetic. It turned out there was a worse thing than Quill getting bored with him. There was Quill feeling sorry for him. 

"Forget it. We're done here."

He tucked Groot under his arm, grabbed a corner of his new bag full of parts and dragged it away to his work room. At least Quill didn't try to help. He hauled the bag inside, slammed the door shut and locked it, and tried to breathe easier.

Even without Quill there, though, Rocket couldn't calm down. He paced the room and hugged Groot to his chest, telling himself things were okay now, but his fur was still standing on end and his body was itching with the urge to... to fight, or... or...

He missed the old Groot fiercely. He wanted to scamper up the trunk of his body and cling to his back, to feel powerful being high above everyone else. No matter how tightly he clung to Groot's pot, it just didn't feel the same. He was angry that he could miss big Groot when he was grateful just to have a Groot who was still _alive_ , and he was angry that he was trying his hardest and he still felt guilty about it, and he was angry that Quill had made him feel like this in the first place, and nothing was making it _stop_.

Rocket put Groot down carefully on a bench, next to a machine he'd been working on lately, a new trap to use in stakeouts. Then he picked up the biggest hammer in his toolkit and smashed it into pieces. Groot let out a small sound of shock, but Rocket smiled at him.

"It's okay," Rocket said, "I'm going to fix it."

He started pulling apart the pieces, laying them all out on the floor so he could see every single one, making a separate spot for the ones that were bent or broken. He took a deep breath and noticed his hands had stopped shaking. Good. He still didn't feel calm, but maybe by time he put all these pieces together again, he would.

He reached for the first part, and then paused. He checked that the door was really locked, that nobody was listening in or waiting outside. Then he went to the speaker bolted to the underside of his table and put on some of Quill's tunes. When he started humming along, he realised that his fur was no longer standing on end and his muscles weren't tensed and amazingly, he felt kind of okay.

  
  


Some days, Groot was calm and happy, and rode comfortably along with them as the youngest, smallest members of their crew, and it felt as if life was something like normal. On other days, he flailed and cried and nothing Rocket or anyone else did could make him stop, and Rocket wondered if his life would ever feel normal again.

Those days made Rocket wonder if he should have left Groot with somebody else. Back on Xandar, probably, where they had botanists who knew about every plan under a hundred different suns and they'd always know what Groot needed. Where they could keep him out of the hands of someone like the Collector, or someone else who would treat him like a curiosity, a thing. They'd dealt with a few of those over the years; the first bounty ever put on their heads wasn't for crimes they committed, but for what Groot was, by another curious, rich asshole who thought Groot was a thing he could own. And on Xandar, in a greenhouse, Groot wouldn't be dependent on a guy who was rude and selfish and too fucked up to even take care of himself unless he was in a shootout.

He wouldn't have dreamed of telling anyone else, except that one day he'd finally gotten Groot to sleep after an exhausting two hours of wailing that he could only half understand, and when he walked into the kitchenette to feed his growling stomach, Gamora said, "Hey, that was tough. Well done."

"Oh, don't you even  _ try _ making fun of me right now. I will  _ eat your face. _ "

"I'm not," she said. "I'm getting you a drink."

"I don't need a drink," he said automatically, but took a huge gulp of the Kandlleen brandy as soon as she set it down in front of him. Unfortunately when he'd drained it all, Gamora was staring at him intently from the other side of the table, so it looked like this was going to be a drink with strings attached.

"What was that about?" she asked.

"Groot not sleeping? I don't... uh..." Rocket stuttered to a stop as his exhausted brain tried to find a smartass response, without admitting that he had no idea what Groot was so upset about.

"No. Why would I be making fun of you?"

"Oh come on, lady. I'm not exactly brilliant at this. I'm probably fucking everything up."

"Really?" She crossed her arms and leaned back in her seat. "From where I'm sitting, you look like you're doing pretty well."

"How would you know?"

"I'm the daughter of a shitty father. I know what bad parenting looks like. What are you the child of, a beast?"

It got Rocket's hackles up, but he tried to stay cool. He could still joke. "The child of a sadist and an operating table, more like it."

"Well, take it from someone who's dad fucked her up. You're not going to ruin Groot."

"You can't know that."

"Sure I can. You want me to test you to prove it?"

_ No _ , Rocket thought, immediately, because it was one thing to doubt himself and another to prove to someone else that he was unfit for this, he wasn't even fit to be around his favourite person any more. But he also never met a challenge he could resist.

"Okay, daughter-of-an-asshole. Shoot."

"Will you always try your best?"

"What kind of question is that? Of course I'll try my fucking best."

"I mean, you'll never give up on him even when you're tired, and you'll never leave him alone unless you're sure he can take care of himself?"

"Of course!"

"And you'll ask your friends for help if there's anything you can't handle?"

That one sent a shiver down his spine. "Yes," he said, although he knew it was half a lie. He'd asked for help sometimes, but most of the time he still held Groot and his own inadequacies close to his chest, where nobody else could see. He would try, if that was what he had to do to look after Groot. He would at least ask sometimes.

"You'll never hurt him on purpose?"

"What the fuck kind of question is that?"

"Answer it."

"No. I'll never hurt him at all!"

Gamora shook her head. "Everyone hurts each other sometimes. Just look at us. We like each other, and we hurt each other all the time, but we don't mean to."

Rocket swallowed. "I dunno. Sometimes I do really want to hurt Quill."

"Yeah, me too." She sighed. "You can't expect that you'll  _ never _ hurt Groot. But you'll try, right?"

Rocket would blow up everything he held dear if it would stop Groot getting hurt. Or he'd swear never to blow anything up again. Whatever it cost. It scared him, how much he'd give to protect Groot. Groot had given up his life for Rocket. Rocket would do worse things than that for Groot.

"I don't want him hurt by anyone," he said, at last. "I guess he'll get hurt sometimes, but I'd do anything to stop it."

Gamora smiled. "And you love him, right?"

"What kind of question is that?" Rocket snapped, and then turned away. "Of course I love him."

"Well, that's the last question. Congratulations, you pass."

Rocket's ears pricked up. "What, really? You're not joking?"

"Why do you keep expecting me to be joking? I'm no Quill. I don't joke."

"It just seems too easy."

"From here, it looks like the rest of it is hard enough. Don't make this part harder than it needs to be." She smiled. "I won't tell you to stop worrying about every little thing, whether you're treating him the right way or whether he's growing up normally. You're going to worry anyway. But you don't have to worry about whether you're good enough. You are."

Rocket swallowed. He wished he had another drink.

"Your dad really fucking sucked, huh?"

Gamora didn't laugh very often, so Rocket almost didn't recognise it as a laugh. It was a harsh, short thing, more like a bark, and she was only barely smiling. But it was a laugh all the same.

"You could say that," she said, after the laughing had stopped but the fraction of a smile remained.

"You turned out pretty good though."

The smile was gone then, and she looked away. 'You really think so?"

"Uh, sure." Rocket hadn't expected to have to qualify that statement. "You're a wicked great assassin, but you're a good teammate, and you're not one of those assholes that goes around killing people just for shits and giggles. Not like me."

"I like to let people know what will happen if they give me a reason. But I wait for them to give me a reason."

Rocket didn't wait for people to give him a reason at all. If they pissed him off or were in his way, Rocket went on the attack. Sometimes he pissed people off on purpose just because he needed a fight. He was an asshole by anyone's definition, and that was fine, because he didn't care what anyone thought of him except Groot. Except maybe, now, he cared what this crew thought.

He wasn't a good person. He'd always known it. He thought you had to be good to raise a child, or the kid would end up another asshole like himself. Only Gamora was a pretty good person who had an unbelievably shitty dad. And she was a good person who thought that Rocket was good enough. Maybe knowing that could be enough.

"One day, we're going to find your dad, and you can punch him in the face," he said, by way of a thank you.

"It's kind of you to say so." She sighed. "That would just get us all killed, though."

"We'll kill him first."

She smiled. "I would love that. But I don't think it's possible."

For Quill or Drax, Rocket would puff up with bravado and declare for all the world that  _ he _ would take that monster down. Right now, though, in the dark and quiet with too much of their hearts already bared, he couldn't find it in him to bluff.

"I guess the universe isn't fair. I know that better than anyone," he said, after a beat. "But if it was, I'd hold that bastard down while you stab him."

"Thank you," Gamora said. In an unusual experience for Rocket, she looked like she really meant it.

  
  
  


When he first escaped Halfworld, Rocket struggled to find somewhere he could sleep. Enclosed spaces felt like a cage, but sleeping in the open felt far too vulnerable. And then there were the nightmares. It wasn't until he and Groot escaped that he could sleep peacefully.

The first night they were working together, he was too embarrassed to admit how much he wanted to curl up in the crook of Groot’s elbow or the curve of his neck and drift off to sleep. He waited until he was sure Groot was asleep before he climbed over his legs and settled into his arms. He reached out to Groot’s chest with one hand, digging his claws in just a little for extra security. Then he finally let himself go, drifting away into the calmest sleep he could remember in his life.

He woke the next morning to see Groot’s big brown eyes on him. Rocket tensed instantly, and felt Groot do the same. They stared at each other for a moment, Rocket bracing himself for a “What are you doing?” or a “Get off me,” for the end of their fragile, brand new partnership.

“I am Groot?”

Rocket stared him. He started trying to talk and found his voice dry and raspy. “Yes,” he coughed, “I did sleep well. Thank you for asking.” 

Now it’s too dangerous to hold Groot while he sleeps, so he keeps the pot beside his bed. When he wakes in the night, ready to fight and run, at least he can see that Groot is right there. It doesn’t stop the nightmares of being held down and cut open, but when he goes to sleep wondering whether he’s raising Groot right, at least he can look over and see Groot there, sleeping soundly and safely.

  
  


‘Hungry’ wa one of the first words that Rocket learns to recognise again. It immediately made his life ten times less stressful. The responsibility for feeding a Groot who couldn't tell him when he was hungry was enormous. It had sometimes gotten Rocket so anxious that he spent hours breaking down half the electronics on the ship until Quill yelled at him to put them back together again. Once Groot learned ‘hungry’, at least Rocket could stop fretting about whether he was getting enough water or enough compost.

That worked for about a month, until they land a particularly high-paying contract and had to truck deep into empty space to get across the galaxy. It would be weeks of ship time before they reached their destination, and Rocket had made sure to stock up on plenty of compost and the best water he could buy, stoically ignoring Drax and Quill’s scoffing as he labelled his special Groot water supply separately from their drinking water. Gamora even offered to help him set up a shipboard worm colony so they could make their own extra enriched dirt, but Rocket balked at that. The compost he could just about stand, since Gamora did most of the dirty work of adding the rotten food and turning it over every day until it broke down. Worms, though, tickled something unpleasantly in the back of his brain, some dark memory that recoiled at the thought of the wet pink things wriggling in the dark.

He had prepared for everything he possibly could. He had no way to prepare for what happened when he fed Groot everything he had, and Groot was still hungry.

"I just watered you," he said, exasperated, to the pot next to him on the floor.

"I am  _ Groot _ ," he whines.

"Well, I can't help that. And you get fertiliser once a week, any more and it'll burn your roots." Rocket didn't understand how rotted down food scraps could 'burn' anything, but the books all mentioned it and it sounded terrifying, so he was fastidious about fertilising Groot's soil right on schedule.

"I am Groot."

"Look, I don't know how you can still be hungry, but I can't feed you right now. I'm working."

Rocket was sitting on the floor of their room, surrounded by parts and clutching a delicate circuitboard in his paw. It was going to be a remote detonation weapon - just a small charge, one they could just as easily pick up at a market when they reached their destination, but it felt good to do this delicate work himself. Building weapons was as much a hobby as it was work, and he needed to make something if he was going to spend two full weeks on the ship without losing his mind.

He couldn't concentrate on it now, though, because there were tiny Groot-tendrils creeping over his shoulder and poking into every hole and groove in the board. Groot wasn't ready to leave his pot yet, but for the last week he'd been starting to learn how to grow his arms out as long as he wants to. It had filled Rocket with warm delight the first time he saw Groot stretch out some tendrils towards the watering can and try to pick it up himself. He'd been so delighted he thought he was going to burst. Right now it was a lot less cute.

"Groot,  _ no _ ," he snapped. "I need to work here, so get your suckers out of it!"

"I am  _ Groot _ ." It was still a plaintive whine, but the suckers withdrew

"I'm sorry, but I gotta work on this, and I don't want to snap your little fingers off." Rocket said, starting feel desperate. "Do you want me to get Gamora to come and water you?"

"I am Groot," the twig grumbled, in what was definitely a 'no'.

"Well, be quiet then. I'll feed you when it's time. Now let me work."

As he focused back on his work, he tuned out all the other noise in the room. Hee was turning Groot’s words over in his mind the way his fingers turned over weapon parts. Groot had different sounds for ‘hungry’ when he wanted nutrients versus water, and this was similar, but a different inflection, too. His sounds didn’t exactly have a grammatical structure, but Rocket could hear when different sounds were related… 

There was a sick sensation plummeting through his chest when Rocket thought through what that botanist had told him. Water. Soil.  _ Sunlight _ .

He threw down the circuitboard into his carefully laid out map of parts. His workspace was a mess and the circuitboard could have broken and Rocket  _ did not care _ . He just grabbed Groot’s pot and hauled ass, and didn’t care how many things he broke along the way. In the cockpit, he leapt into the copilot's seat, the pot clamped between his knees, and started keying in a new course.

"Woah, Rocket!" Quill said, from the other seat. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"I'm taking us back to a system. We need to make a stop and I'm taking us there... hey!"

Quill had overridden his commands in an instant, deleting his co-ordinates and putting them back on their original course. "We have a destination, Rocket, and you don't just walk in and change it without telling anybody!"

Rocket slapped his hands on his control panel. "We change course when we have to, and we need to get in range of a sun!"

"Why would we need to do that? We have a deadline, Rocket! Or don't you want to get paid?"

There's an exasperated tone that gets into Quill's voice sometimes. His "I can't believe I have to put up with this" voice. Normally it gives Rocket a smug satisfaction to hear it, knowing he's pushed the guy's buttons. Right now it makes him feel like he's suffocating, because he so desperately needs Quill to just  _ fucking understand _ .

"Of course I want to get paid," Rocket growled, "But some of us can't go for weeks on end without seeing the goddamn sun and... and don't fucking talk to me like that when  _ I need this _ ."

"We all need things, but we don't get to just take them from  _ each other _ . We're supposed to be a  _ team. _ "

Then Quill locked the controls and got up from his seat, and time seemed to slow down as Rocket realised what was about to happen. Quill grabbed him under the shoulders and started lifting him out of the seat, and Rocket just panicked. He could feel Groot's pot slipping from between his legs and tilting off the seat, and his mind was full of hysterical fear for Groot, he was going to fall, the pot could break,  _ Groot _ could break, he was already starving and he could  _ die _ .

He wanted nothing more than to reach for Groot and hold him, keep him safe. But he couldn't make his body do what he wanted it to. As soon as Quill touched him, he was fighting his way out of his grip and he couldn't help himself, couldn't stop thrashing and clawing against Quill's arms. He'd spent his whole life fighting for the respect people accorded other sentients, and he only did it by fighting his urge to drop to all fours and snarl and bite every time he felt threatened. He felt all that hard-won self-control leave him in a few moments, until he was nothing but struggling and fear.

He didn't pass out, but Rocket wasn't aware of where he was or what he was doing until Quill had dropped him and he'd been standing free on the open floor for the space of ten breaths. As his panting slowed, he blinked and tried to focus. Quill was on the floor in front of him, at his eye level for once. He wasn't making a move towards Rocket. He was cradling Groot's pot where it had fallen on the ground. There was a chip, and Grood was curled into himself, cowering, but he was okay.

"Rocket," Quill said, softly, "Could you maybe put the gun down?"

Rocket looked at his paw. He didn't remember drawing his gun.

"I am Groot," said Groot, meekly.

Rocket wanted to punch himself in the face. Fucking idiot. Fucking forgetting that Groot even needed fucking sunlight, and he can't even try to fix it without getting in a fight and hurting Groot in the process.

“I just want some sunlight, is that so fucking hard?” Rocket shrugged out of his holster and kicked it across the floor. There was more of an animal snarl than a human plead in his voice when he said “ _ Please. _ ”

There was a moment's silence. "We can do it, but it'll cost us on the commission if we're late."

"Take it out of my share."

Quill laughed, and then stopped. "Wait, for real? You must really be desperate."

"And drawing a gun didn't tell you that?"

At least Quill looked suitably chastened at that.

"I am Groot."

"What's that, buddy?" Quill asked. It was really directed at Rocket when people asked that question, but Quill always looked at Groot when he said it. Rocket was grateful for that, and it made him hate him even more.

"He says you can take it out of his share, too." Rocket said, his voice cracking with exhaustion. "And he needs sunlight. He's hungry."

"Oh. Of course." Quill looked between them. "You could have just told me that."

He could have. Rocket wanted to yell that that wasn't the  _ point _ , the point was that if he said there was an emergency then people should  _ listen _ . He didn't want to explain, he wanted people to just  _ get it _ so that he didn't have to feel like this all the time, like he still couldn't believe that they'd help him when things got bad.

But he was tired, and he'd got what he wanted. He was too afraid to keep fighting, and too angry to say thank you. So he climbed back into the copilot's seat and hung on to Groot, staring hungrily ahead for their new destination.

  
  


Groot was becoming more and more like the Groot Rocket had always known, but he still wondered how much he really remembered. The twig he’d salvaged wasn’t from Groot’s old head, probably not his torso, either. He didn’t know if that mattered. He didn’t know how Groot  _ worked _ . He could build the most powerful bomb the world had ever seen out of scraps in Quill’s footlocker, but he didn’t know where his best friend kept his brain, whether it was in his head or his roots or somehow stored in every cell of his body.

He was still Groot. He said so, every day. Rocket didn’t know how much he remembered, though. Did he really remember that he and Rocket had been friends? Did he remember everything they’d done? Or did he just like Rocket because Rocket was the one who was always there?

Did he remember being blown apart?

Rocket tried not to think about it too much. It made him feel like he was being cut so deep that he wanted to chew up one of Quill’s precious cassette tapes just to feel better. But he’d been told that if he ever touched them he would be abandoned on the next habitable planet and never allowed near this ship again, and he wasn’t prepared to burn this bridge that badly. He stuck to insulting the people around him, and tried to make that comfort enough.

  
  


Rocket had always had nightmares, but there were more of them now than there had been for a while. Every goddamn night, it felt like. And they didn’t always disappear when he woke up. He spent every day of his fucking life remembering his body being ripped apart and put back together all wrong. He used to cope with it by shooting something, ripping something apart, or sometimes by clinging tightly to Groot. Climbing Groot wasn’t like a hug, or anything. Groot wasn’t warm, or soft, or any of the things those squishy humies seemed to like about hugging each other. Blech. But Groot was solid and unyielding. Rocket could curl into his neck or cling to his waist and know that he was real, he was there, and there was one goddamn thing in the galaxy he could rely on.

He couldn’t shoot things  _ or _ cling on to Groot any more, at least not when they were in transit, but he got by. Picking fights with people, insulting Quill, it wasn’t the same.

Groot had nightmares now, too. That never happened before. He woke in the night and cried, bawling barely-coherently about terror and pain, and Rocket held him and tried blearily to soothe him back to sleep without anyone else waking up. He sat in his bunk with the pot in his lap, Groot's tendrils curled around one hand and stroking his back with the other. It was a battle to stay calm enough to keep the soothing tone is his voice, when Rocket himself was filled with fear for Groot, fear for the others waking up, and the moment of panic he always feels when he's woken up unexpectedly.

One night it had been half an hour and nothing was working, so even though Rocket doesn't want to wake anyone else, he started to sing. His voice made a rough and broken imitation of Groot's favourite song from the mixtape, but there was a tiny sigh of relief when Groot recognised the tune. Rocket held him and kept singing, over and over, until he could tell Groot was finally asleep again. He sat there all night, wide awake with a pot plant between his knees, not daring to sleep lest the moment break again.

The next morning, Groot was the same as ever - happy and curious, asking for food and music and to play. He was getting stronger with his shoots and with his exploring, and he was starting to find his own way around. He threw a tendril up at a ceiling fixture, the longest vine he's grown yet, and pulled himself up off the table. Rocket's heart was in his mouth as Groot swung himself across the room; he was so afraid for him that he wanted to yell like it was an emergency, to launch himself across the room and pull Groot down. But Groot was fearless he flew through the air, dropped onto the floor behind Drax and froze as soon as Drax head him and turned around. Then he collapsed into giggles as soon as Drax turned away again.

Rocket felt like his legs were shaking as he walked over to pick Groot up. He was so proud of Groot for flying through the air like there was nothing to fear, and so afraid of what danger he could get into once he was old enough to walk. He missed his old friend Groot, and he loved this tiny new seedling, and he couldn't wait to see the kind of person Groot grew up into, and he was so afraid of all the things that could happen to him. 

He couldn't even process all those feelings at once. He picked up Groot's pot instead, and held up his paw for a high five.

  
  
  


It was the biggest commission they'd ever gotten. A small planet under siege, without enough firepower to fight them back. A small planet that lacked the money to hire a competing militia, but had more than enough to hire a small band of mercenaries to try to take down their enemies from within. The Guardians all stayed up late planning - and arguing - on the night before they embarked. They had several days of travel time before they had to put this plan into action, but Rocket wanted to get it nailed down early, as does Quill.

Rocket tried not to think too much about the way he consistently taok Quill's side as they hashed out the details. Gamora seemed taken aback by it, too, which was even more annoying. Rocket knew how they saw him, a small creature with a big gun, full of rage and out of control, compared to Quill's calm. That doesn't make Quill better  _ or _ smarter, but it was what got you the role of 'leader' and 'planner' and 'guy with the right ideas', rather than Rocket's feat of breaking them all out of prison in under eight hours. Drax was the one whose problem-solving didn't go beyond challenging everyone he saw to a knife fight, and even Gamora didn't think very far past the tip of her sword.

"But we don't know that your plan will  _ work _ ," she said, when he made  _ yet another _ plea for stealth and scrambling technology.

_ Only because your tiny mind doesn't understand it _ , was what he wanted to snarl back. He'd thrown a few barbs earlier, but he was getting tired of talking and he wanted to get to work. Insulting people, while fun, made people get defensive and stop listening to the  _ important _ points he made, dragging out their arguments for three times as long. They were such babies sometimes.

"I don't know their technology exactly, but their cloaking  _ and _ radar are probably based on boring old Xandarian standards like all you humies, so if I get close enough in an escape pod, I can jam it."

"How, though? You're just assuming you'll hit the ship and be able to do something!"

"One, I'll build a device ahead of time, but two, when has that ever not worked? I know what I'm doing."

"I say we blow a hole in the side of their ship." She said, crossing her arms as though that were final.

"How will that work? When has that ever worked? This isn't a blow 'em up job, this is like when we broke into the Dark Aster over Xandar."

"I seem to remember the end of your plan was 'shoot him with a really big gun'."

"Yeah,  _ after _ I came up with a plan to get us on the ship without them blowing us out of the sky!"

He had to stop then; Groot, who had been sitting placidly in his lap until now, suddenly stirred and started thrashing his limbs about. This wasn't a tantrum of frustration. Groot was wailing and hitting things with all the seriousness a child could muster, as if he were trying to fight the world while still planted firmly in his pot. Rocket tried to soothe him at first, and then hold him down, but Groot won't stop and Rocket's afraid of snapping any of his brittle limbs to really contain him.

Once, he gave zero thought to Groot snapping parts of his body off and regrowing them. Now the thought of Groot losing the smallest, freshest tendril was unbearable, whether it hurts him or not. The fact that Rocket would like to just sit on him until he calmed, but he  _ categorically cannot do that _ , just made him even more frustrated.

"Would you just  _ shut up _ ?" he hissed. "I'm working here! You know, the thing that keeps you in sunlamps and fertiliser?"

But he tried talking, and he tried holding him, and it didn't help. He even tried humming under his breath, and he'd usually rather die than let Quill catch him singing one of his stupid songs. But nothing would calm Groot down this time, and there was no way to keep planning as his wails only got louder. Even Gamora and Drax, who were usually eager to help look after him, were starting to look annoyed. So Rocket picked him up and took him away to their bunk, where it was small and damp. He put on the tiny, bright lamp he'd started using at night when he was worried about Groot getting enough UV. It got them away from the meeting so the others could keep planning, but it still took a lot longer than usual for Groot to calm down. There was more than an hour of stroking and singing before Groot could calm down. Rocket left him there sleeping, worn out from his own emotional turmoil, before he returned to the meeting table.

"We have a plan," Quill said, as Rocket pulled himself up into a chair.

"It probably sucks," Rocket said, wearily. "Go on." 

  
  


Rocket's world broke down the night that he woke to a crying Groot, pulled the pot into his lap and in the middle of Groot's usual nightmare-driven sobbing, he heard the words  _ torn apart _ . It broke his heart in an instant, and forever.

"You're okay," he whispered, over and over. "You're okay. You're here, you're all here."

Groot cried harder and clung to Rocket's fur, and Rocket could only piece together fragments of words like  _ hurts _ and  _ gone _ and  _ broken. _ He didn't know whether Groot meant now or the dream or in the past, but it answered some questions he now realised he didn't want answers to. Not really. Not this, not knowing that Groot remembered being blown up and had no way to understand it, that this what he dreamed every night.

He stayed calm while he soothed Groot back to sleep, but his hands were shaking as he stroked Groot's back and scraped some dirt over Groot's lower body like a blanket, just the way he likes it. Rocket's hands had been shaking ever since Groot said  _ torn apart _ , and he felt the familiar memory of a knife in his spine. He tried to stay calm for Groot, but he could feel something rising within him, something ugly and monstrous. It all clicked together in his mind in the most horrifying way. Groot had the nightmares, and the panicked tantrums, and  _ torn apart _ . He was cracked along all the same lines that Rocket was.

It was worse than anything Rocket feared. He wanted to scream, but he didn't think he could ever stop, and screaming didn't seem like enough. So he took his shaking body and his broken heart to the other end of the ship to see what else he could break.

This was the end, he knew, as he ripped a control panel out of the wall and slashed a fistful of wires. They wouldn't let him care for Groot after this campaign of wanton destruction. There was no way they wouldn't find out, either, because it wasn't not limited to his workshop and his own things, like his usual rages. He'd broken things before, yes, but only  _ his _ things, and never so badly that he couldn't put them back together again. Usually fixing them again was the point. He tried to keep this to his own possessions, but soon he was driving jagged scraps of metal into the ship itself, into their chairs and notes and drawings and all the bits and pieces that have made this ship into their home.

(He caught himself when he was about to stab Quill's cassette player. He hated it in that moment, more than he hated anything else, even his own stupid broken life. But he paused, his chest heaving, and for a moment his mind cleared. He stabbed the wall next to it and kept going.)

There was no way he wouldn't wake them up with this, the way he wa carrying on; he knew that soon they'd wake up and see what he'd done. Then they'd take Groot away and Rocket would put up a token resistance, but he'd know it was right, that he's too broken and fucked up to handle even looking at the life he's ruined without ruining it any further. And knowing that, there was no point in stopping, which was good, because he couldn't stop. He'd been trying so hard, only to find that he'd failed before he even began, and nothing would ever be okay again so he might as well destroy it all.

Gamora was the first one to find him. She yelled at him in anger and tried to grab him, but he scratched at her and she backed off, her hand drifting towards the knife she always kept and her hip, even in sleep. Quill tried next, first with the tired voice of reason that Rocket didn't even hear. He got his hands on the scruff of Rocket's neck, but he wasn't quick or ruthless enough. Moments later, Rocket had his back against the wall and his teeth bared; Quill loved his fingers too much to deal with that. It was Drax who got him, picking him up and pinning Rocket's arms to his sides between his two huge hands. When Rocket sunk his teeth into his hand, Drax swore but he didn't let go.

"You want to explain what this is all about?" Quill snapped.

Rocket wanted to close his eyes, pretend he wasn't there. He struggled instead, even though Drax had him held fast, and kept his eyes fixed on Drax's fingers around him, or the walls, or the floor. Never any faces. 

"Can you talk?" Gamora asked.

"Yes."

"If Drax puts you down, will you stop wrecking things?"

"No."

Quill let out an aborted, frustrated shout, and Gamora's face hardened. "Okay, well, what the hell? What are you doing? And is there a reason we shouldn't throw you out the airlock for trying to destroy our ship?"

"You should throw me out the airlock." Gamora's eyebrows shot up, and Rocket looked away. "Okay, maybe not the airlock. Dump me on the next world we stop at, though."

"Rocket,  _ why _ ?"

"Because I fucked up," he hissed. "I fucked up and I break anything and I'm just going to keep breaking everything, so you  _ should _ cut me loose."

Quill said "If you want to leave, you can just leave. You don't have to break shit to make us kick you out."

Drax said, "Groot would miss you."

Rocket shuddered and tried to turn away, but Drax's grip left him nowhere to run. He didn't want to say it. He didn't even think he had the words to express it. The words were rising up in his throat, though, just as unstoppable as the violence he'd unleashed, his control obliterated in the face of Groot's pain.

"Groot's better off with you," he gritted out. "I've fucked up. I'm going to keep fucking up. He... I... it's ruined, okay."

"I think we talked once about how you were the right person to look after Groot," Gamora said. "You're good at it. He needs you."

The rest of them always got that wrong. Groot didn't need Rocket; he just needed someone to feed him and protect him and love him. Rocket was the one who needed Groot to be strong and solid and fearless, to shield Rocket from the world when he couldn't face it, which was far more often than any of them knew. But even if he grew big, he wasn't that Groot any more. Rocket couldn't ask him to be a shield. He'd never be fearless again.

"You were _wrong_ ," Rocket snapped. "I'm not good, I'm not good enough, it was fucked up for the start and _I'm_ fucked up and it can't work."

"Rocket, you're fine. I don't know what happened, but I can't imagine it's anything that can't be fixed."

"It can't"

"Why not?"

" _ Because now he's like me _ ," Rocket roared, then went limp in Drax's arms. "He remembers Xandar. He remembers being  _ torn apart _ . He freaks out. He has nightmares like me."

He's going to cry. Or he is crying. He can't tell the apprehension from the act any more. He'd hide, but he's already been exposed. There's nothing left that's worth hiding.

"Sometimes he will be troubled," Drax said, in his best imitation of a soothing voice. "All children are. He's been through more than most, so he may be more troubled. It's sad, but to be expected."

Rocket was shaking his head before Drax was halfway through his speech. "No, it wasn't supposed to be like this. He's supposed to be  _ better _ ."

"What do you mean, 'better'?" Quill said, sharply. "If you'd just told us there was something wrong with him instead of trying to fix it yourself then maybe this wouldn't have happened!"

Rocket stared at him for a moment. Quill had gotten the wrong end of the blaster there, but Rocket couldn't organise the words right to say what he meant. The word  _ better _ had forced its way out of his throat like a parasite, just like every word he'd said to them tonight, like the words that were scratching their way out now.

"No," he said, "Groot was supposed to be better than me."

He was aware of them asking him more questions, but with those words, his brain had switched off. He was spent. The storm had raged through him; it was always there, sometimes howling and sometimes a rumble on the horizon, but always, always there, keeping him on edge, making sure he was always bracing himself for a fight, ready to defend. Only now it had taken him over completely, churned its way through the ship and through Rocket's heart, and left silence in its wake. His body was limp, exhausted, and he was puzzled to find himself suddenly cold; Drax had decided, correctly, that he was no further threat for now, and put him on the floor. Rocket had been fighting his captivity before, and here he had barely noticed he was free.

For the first time Rocket could remember, his mind was completely quiet and still. He used to wish for this. He wouldn't have wished so hard if he knew he had to be broken to get here.

And yet, it seemed there was always some piece left that could be broken further still. Despite all the voices in the room talking at him, the sound he could hear most clearly was Groot's tiny, sleepy, scratchy voice from the other room. He sounded confused and curious but not distressed, yet, and it wasn't fair that he could sound so sweet when Rocket's ruined his life too. He tried to cover his ears, block out the sound so he didn't have to hear this any more. If they wouldn't let him break anything else, they could at least let him disappear.

"I'm going to get Groot," said Gamora's voice, close by. "He needs you."

"He needs someone who can help him." Rocket couldn't open his eyes. "I can't do it. I can't even help myself."

He wanted to look away - or better yet, get up and leave, but Groot was so worried he looked like he was on the verge of crying. This was just what Rocket was trying to avoid. He wanted to leave, he should leave, because seeing Groot afraid made the ground open up beneath his feet, and seeing Groot in pain was worse than knives, worse than anything.

"I am Groot?"

His voice shook as he answered "Yeah, buddy. Of course I'm okay."

Then he hid his face in his hands and sobbed.

"I want to make it better," he whispered.

"I am Groot."

"I  _ know _ ," Rocket said, "I know that, I always knew that, but that never made me better and now we're the same and I don't know how to make you better and..."

Groot was reaching out now, the fresh new tendrils of his arms wrapping around Rocket's neck until he could pull himself out of Gamora's hands and into Rocket's lap.

"I am Groot," he repeated.

"You shouldn't. I don't know how to do this right."

The tendrils were sinking right into Rocket's fur, more and more of them around him, holding his fast as Groot buried his head in Rocket's chest. "I am  _ Groot _ ."

Rocket looked at his tiny, fragile face, feeling his heart in his throat, closed his eyes.

"Yeah, I know. I love you too." 

It didn't fix things. It wasn't going to make them better. But it meant Rocket was here, with Groot, not losing himself in an orgy of destruction or launching himself out into space without a word to anyone else. He still thought,  _ I don't know what to do _ , only that wasn't entirely true. He wasn't sure he could raise Groot right, but that wasn't a good enough answer any more. He had to try. If it could help them, Rocket would do it. Whatever it was. Whether it was being launched into an empty vacuum or walking into a science lab again. Or something even harder.

"Hey Quill," he said, roughly. "I need you to sing."

"What now?"

Rocket glared.

"I just want to make sure I heard you correctly, because I think I just heard you ask -"

"Don't make me break your face for this, Stardick, I'm not asking twice."

"Okay, okay. You're a strange crowd. Any requests?"

"I don't care. Anything."

" _ When the night has come... _ "

Rocket felt his shoulders tense immediately. "No!"

Quill glared at him. "You said to sing! I'm trying to help!"

"I didn't mean stop singing," Rocket pulled Groot closer and tried to will himself to relax again, get his fur to lie flat. "Just not that one, it's... it's too mushy."

Quill snorted and shared a 'can you believe this?' kind of look with Gamora, but she just stared back accusingly. Rocket liked Gamora on days like this. Quill sighed, settled down on the floor next to Rocket, started singing 'Stuck in the Middle' instead. Rocket had his eyes closed, leaning back against the wall, but he could feel the pleased noises Groot was making, the tiny movements as he swayed to the music. Whatever it took to make Groot feel better. It was just a happy side effect that Rocket felt a wave of relief crash over him the moment Quill started singing, like the music was sinking into his very bones.

The rest of the night was a blur. Rocket was sometimes aware of music, and of Groot sitting there in his arms, and sometimes his mind was far away, not in the ship or in a lab but somewhere completely else. Quiet and strange, but peaceful. He was almost asleep when he felt Groot's pot being pulled out of his hands and he came sharply awake, breathing heavily.

"Shh, it's okay," Gamora said. "I'm just moving him so you can sleep in your bed and not wake up in a chair tomorrow."

"You can't take him away," Rocket said, instantly.

"I wasn't going to. Even when you asked me to."

Rocket swallowed, and closed his eyes. He was going to get through the night. He didn't know what kind of retribution was in store from his crewmates in the morning.

"What happens now? I mean, I know you're taking me to bed, but what after that? What happens tomorrow?"

Gamora held out a hand to help him up. He was surprised to find his legs still shaking.

"What happens tomorrow is the same thing that happens every morning," she said. "You get up. you do your best. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Eventually, it gets better."

  
  


**Two years later**

"I am Groot!"

Rocket groaned and buried his face in the pillow. "Go back to sleep."

"I am  _ Groot _ ."

He felt Groot's feet running up his spine, and hands in the fur on top of his hair, and then Groot was sticking his head in Rocket's ear.

"Okay, firstly,  _ gross _ ," Rocket said, pulling Groot off him. "Secondly, I don't care if you're bored, I'm still asleep. And thirdly.."

"I am  _ Groot _ ," he insisted, again, and this time Rocket smiled.

"Yes, we're going on an adventure. We're going to the Sovereign and we're going to protect all their shiny gold garbage from an interdimensional tentacle monster and you're going to forget I told you all this in a minute, aren't you?"

"I am Groot!" he yelled.

Rocket onto his back and let Groot sit on his chest, putting one paw at his back to steady him. "Yeah, I'm excited too."

In the old days, Rocket was always the first one awake in the mornings; he slept light, always on the alert, while big Groot slept like the unshakeable tree that he was. Now, it was usually the little sapling Groot who was awake first, pulling Rocket out of his uneasy dreams. Sometimes it was was nightmares, and Rocket woke with Groot's branches wrapped tight around his ribcage with fear. Now, though, most days were like this - Groot jumping on his bed with excitement, ready to drag him out of bed to play.

"I am Groot?"

"Nah, I'm not scared," Rocket said, with a yawn. "Tentacle monster? Oh yeah, I'm sure they think they're so great, but they haven't met us."

"I am Groot?" he asked again, plaintively. Rocket suddenly remembered one of the books Drax got for him to read. That might have been the wrong thing to say.

"Oh. It's okay if you're scared, though. The monster's gonna be big, and he might be pretty scary. You can stay on the ship if you want, though?"

Groot shook his head, and tugged at Rocket's fur, urgently. "I am Groot!"

"Oh, for the love of… I mean, no of course, come here." Rocket hugged him close. "I never want to leave you behind."

He swallowed, hard, as he felt to top of Groot's head brushing his chin. This was okay, he reminded himself. He couldn't read Groot's mind. Sometimes he was going to say the wrong thing. They were both learning.

"I  _ want _ you there, Groot, it's always better when you're there. Besides, I got a job for you today, come on."

"I am Groot?"

"Well I'm not getting any more sleep  _ now _ , obviously," he said, rolling his eyes.

He hoisted Groot up on his shoulders and made his way through the ship to his workroom. From one room he could hear Drax snoring, loudly; the next was Quill's closed bedroom door, plastered with posters of celebrities that Groot had drawn all over one morning while Rocket egged him on. Gamora was in the common area already, sharpening her swords, and exchanged a quiet 'good morning' with each of them as they passed through. In the workroom, Rocket crouched down on the floor and set Groot down next to him.

"Now you know how much Quill loves his tunes - like he has to listen to them  _ all _ the time, right?"

Groot nodded eagerly, and Rocket patted the box full of wires in front of them.

"Well, I made this - it's like his walkman, but it'll play music out loud for everyone, so we can listen to it while we work. I need you to look after it while we're fighting the monster, okay?"

Groot had been climbing up the side of the amplifier while Rocket was talking. At his last words, Groot squealed and jumped off it, into Rocket's arms.

"Yeah, of course it's important. You got the most important job there is," Rocket murmured to him. "With my guns and you on the buttons, that monster won't know what hit him."

"I am Groot?"

Rocket pretended to think about it. "I don't know, I reckon you and I could take him down ourselves. But yeah, I guess our friends can come too."

Rocket took him through how the amplifier worked and which cable connected where. He'd probably have to do half of this stuff himself once they got down there - Groot was too excited to remember everything Rocket was telling him right now. But it was fine by him. Taking a toddler out on the battlefield wouldn't be everyone's babysitting plan, but they'd found these things usually went better if they kept Groot somewhere that he could see Rocket, where he didn't panic about people being gone. Groot would have a job to do, and music to keep him calm, and their whole family to look out for him.


End file.
